Defining Your Clients' Success
Friday, February 10, 2023
READ TIME: 4-MINUTES
Most of my fitness sales conversations start with the same question:
“What are you looking to accomplish in these next few months?”
Clients usually answer with a quick overview of their goals, while giving me some hints about roadblocks that have prevented them from reaching those goals in the past.
Those roadblocks are an invitation for you to offer services to specifically help the client overcome them and stay on the road to success.
But where does that road go?
Where EXACTLY does that road go?
Is it weight loss? How MUCH weight?
Improved body composition? What’s their desired bf %?
Strength gains? How much stronger? In which lifts?
Speed? How fast? For how far?
Explosiveness? Jumping? Balance?
How long will it take to reach those specific targets?
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
I hate to break it to you, but nobody wants an endless undefined relationship with ANY business. ESPECIALLY the fitness industry.
Over the last 30 years, the fitness industry has broken so many promises that nobody is willing to blindly go ALL IN with a gym or trainer anymore.
Trust is now hard-earned
The best way to build their trust?
Listen when they tell you what they want to accomplish.
Acknowledge that you understand them,
and deliver results.
Deliver results while maintaining an astonishing amount of professionalism..
Deliver results that you can PROVE with data. Measurements, weight lifted, PR’s, body composition scans, before/after, sprint times, benchmarks set and benchmarks improved upon.
And deliver those results on time.
The key to this sequence is helping your clients define the terms of their own success ahead of time.
Next, you must both agree to hold each other accountable to the process, the effort and the timeline.
You must use data and measurables before, during and after the process to help guarantee positive results and to prove your work when you’re finished.
PUT YOUR $$$ WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS
We’ve all had clients who “want” to lose weight but fail to commit to a nutrition plan, and consistently put out poor effort in the gym.
Why do they do this?
Because we let them
We let them become distracted.
We let them convince themselves that it’s not that important to them.
We let them hide behind the fact that there’s more to life than what the scale says.
And while that last statement may be true, you need to remember why they came to you in the first place.
They came to you when their longing for change was so intense that they chose to confide in a stranger, hoping that you could guide them out of the place that they were in
They wanted you to hold them accountable to the process and help them shed all the bullshit that they put in their own way.
They did NOT come to you for you to start making excuses for them.
They do enough of that on their own.
Your job is to hold them to a higher standard, to help them build healthy habits.
Your job is to guide them with knowledge and compassion and accountability until they’ve built a routine in alignment with the person they want to be.
It’s true that the client’s behavior dictates success or failure; a coach who fails to correct misaligned behavior early on is to blame for the client becoming comfortable in an ineffective routine.
KEEP YOUR PROMISES
Establish your clients’ needs up front.
Agree to define the terms of their success, up front. Use metrics and measurables, not just “feelings”.
Identify the barriers to their success. Then offer paid-for services to help them overcome each of those barriers.
- Nutrition coaching
- Meal prep help?
- Delivered meals?
- Accountability check ins
- Data-focused progress checks weekly
Set expectations up front:
- For you
- For the client
- For the process
- For the timeline
- For the results
- For the NEXT goal setting and planning session after they’ve reached these goals
If you and your clients come to an agreement on these terms, you can absolutely guarantee results
If both of you define this promise, make this promise, and KEEP IT; you’re now capable of delivering a very high value service that has the highest likelihood of success.
High value + high likelihood of success + provable results = the easiest big ticket sales you’ll ever make, to clients who are guaranteed to be successful.
Everybody wins.
So quit hiding from the scoreboard and start using it to play the game better.
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